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OK I hate to admit a mistake in the blogosphere, but I think I confused a McSweeney's publication, _The Believer_ with _The Baffler_. Very different I know, somehow I thought I remembered these crowds being linked, but I couldn't find any evidence of that. Anyway, it's _The Baffler_ crew who clearly have some Frankfurt School influence going on, e.g. Thomas Frank in _What's the Matter with Kansas?_ I agree that the Frankfurt School stuff isn't directly useful for organizing, probably - it's more useful for analyzing the cultural and historical situation that makes organizing difficult....

Getting back to the question of revolutionary imagery, which you raised, though, I think is a very interesting one in light of the Frankfurt School. One question might be, what are graphical styles that engage people critically, rather than overwhelming their senses (e.g. fascist aesthetic, sometimes seen in some Stalinist forms as well) or lending themselves immediately to commodification (e.g. hipsterism, the appropriation of left and radical imagery for nonpolitical consumption).

It seems to me that the latter problem is especially vexing today, given the extraordinary ability of culturally radical smallholder capitalists to redeploy bits of culture. I'm not sure if there is a left imagery "out there" which resists commodification and sensory overwhelm while remaining engaging especially to lots of non-elites. It may be more a case of being aware of the pitfalls we face, and of the need to continally be creative, since the things we've already created can be so efficiently used against us.